Deadfall (8 page)

“Then why don't you go over to the saloon and ask for him?” said Cassidy. “I surely can't help you do that.”

“Nope,” said Charley, “but you can run over there and ask that bartender to step outside for a few minutes.”

“Sure enough,” said Cassidy . . . “I can do that.”

“Because if you don't, I'll put a bullet in your gut,” warned Charley. “Now go,” he urged the man, “and don't say a word about my being here.”

He pressed the gun's barrel against Cassidy's stomach.

“Now move,” Charley ordered, “and you better make your story sound convincing.”

Cassidy nodded. He moved around the counter and slowly stepped through the door.

Charley followed, except he stopped just before going outside and stood watching from behind the door's frame.

From his position, Charley could see into the saloon. When Cassidy went inside the worn canvas structure, Charley was able to watch, and if the trading post owner was giving the bartender more information than he was supposed to, he'd do something about it later.

Charley knew he hadn't said any more than he was supposed to, when in less than thirty seconds, Cassidy came out of the saloon. He was followed by the barkeep, a dark-skinned
mestizo
—a mixed breed. Together they crossed over to the barn and disappeared inside.

Charley waited a moment before he stepped out of the trading post doors and began walking slowly across the dirt to the saloon.

Once he was closer, he could see the silhouette of Mitchell Pennell sitting at one of the few tables inside the establishment, located to the right of the makeshift bar, hidden somewhat back in the shadows.

As Charley was about to step into the shaded interior, Pennell's voice stopped him.

“Behind you, Ranger!” the outlaw yelled, followed by a flash of exploding gunpowder that came from under the table.

Charley fired back. His bullet caught Pennell in the shoulder, spinning him out of the chair.

“Not me, you sonofabitch!” yelled Pennell from the floor where he had fallen. “There's two guns right behind you.”

In an instant Charley realized that Pennell had fired at someone in the street in back of him, and not at himself—a warning to him of his own personal danger.

Charley turned just in time to see Cassidy, beside the fallen bartender. The trading post owner was raising a shotgun, getting ready to aim the deadly weapon at him.

The Walker Colt spat two spinning wads of lead that caught Cassidy in both his chest and throat. The trading post proprietor went down spinning, splattering arterial blood all across the sunbaked street.

 

 

Charley came out of his reverie as Pennell was moving over to where Roscoe was still busy washing the breakfast dishes.

“Here ya go, Roscoe,” said Pennell as he lifted the gunnysacks out of the cart, setting them at Roscoe's feet. “These supplies belong to you now. Charley's orders. But he wants Rod and Kelly to have the cart.”

“I'll see that they get it as soon as I'm done here,” said Roscoe. “And thanks,” he added.

Pennell unhitched the burro, holding the animal's lead rope in his hand. He watched as Charley, still a few yards away, fastened the buckle on his saddlebag and turned to Fuerte, nearby.

“If you are ready,
mi amigo
,” said Charley.

“Let us go now,” said the Mexican.

Both of them stepped up into their saddles and spurred away from the camp.

 

 

Rod and Kelly had accepted the two-wheeled cart from Pennell; they began loading their bedrolls and supplies into it immediately. Henry Ellis would ride in the cart with his new puppy, while his horse would pull the two-wheeled vehicle.

Holliday and Feather were packed up and waiting for Roscoe to finish up his chores.

“Think we oughta help ol' Roscoe with them airtight tins Pennell just brung him?” said Holliday.

“Only if some of them tins is full a' whiskey,” said Feather. “I been goin' on now fer around three days without somethin' to wash the dust out a' my gullet.”

“Most likely we'll run across some little villages along the way that's got a
cantina
, Feather,” said Holliday. “I hope you can last it out 'til then.”

“I've waited before . . . reckon I'll just have ta do it again,” said Feather.

Roscoe, now in position on the chuckwagon's spring seat, snapped the reins and had the mules take him over to where the two men were talking.

“If you fellers are done jawin' 'bout things an' such,” he said, “I suppose we should be gettin' a move on.”

C
HAPTER
T
EN

The bandit known as Pedro Jose Bedoya was the first to spot the two-horse wagon with the American woman driving, as it trundled over a low shimmering rise on the dusty trail leading away from the river.

Bedoya turned to the four men riding with him, dedicated
bandidos
like himself. Bedoya, the leader of the pack, had given them orders, shortly after the raid on the Brownsville train, to ride hard for Laredo with the news that their well-planned attack had been stopped by some armed men traveling with the brand-new
gringo
army troops.

The five battle-weary bandits had spent two days and nights in the Mexican section of Laredo, spreading their account of the train attack, while drinking heavily and celebrating.

That morning, they had saddled up again for the long ride back to their base camp in the far desert, fifty or so miles to the west of the Texas town.

“It appears the American woman has lost her way,” said Bedoya in Spanish, chuckling aloud and pointing. “Follow me,
hombres
. We will take her back to our camp as a memento of our stay in Laredo. I may wish to make her my bride. Ha.” He laughed. His
compadres
cackled with him as they spurred away, galloping down a long, sandy slope toward the approaching wagon.

By the time Elisabeth Rogers was aware of the advancing horsemen, it was too late to turn her team and make a run for it. Instead, she reached below her feet and withdrew her dead husband's pistol, tucking it under her traveling skirt, then covering the substantial bulge it made with a crocheted lap blanket.

As the riders came closer, several of the men drew their weapons and began firing into the air, startling Elisabeth's horses. She struggled, reining them to a rumbling standstill.

The first thing she noted was the bright red neckerchief worn around the leader's neck. With her hand clasped firmly around the butt of her husband's revolver, Elisabeth pulled back the hammer and waited until the five Mexicans brought their mounts to a halt alongside her team.

“Aha,” whooped the one who was smiling the widest—the one who wore the red neck scarf. She took him to be their leader. The grinning Mexican edged his apprehensive horse up next to the wagon seat. So close, in fact, she could smell the past few days oozing from his pores.

“What, may I ask, is a woman as beautiful as you doing here in this godforsaken land? And all alone?” Bedoya asked in broken English with both of his eyes twinkling. “There are many dangerous
bandidos
roaming these badlands, have you not heard?”

Elisabeth forced a smile as she slowly slid the hefty gun from beneath the folds of her skirt, still using the lap blanket to conceal the weapon.

“I'm all right,” she told the Mexican. “I really am. You and these men wouldn't happen to have been on the Texas side of the river yesterday morning, would you?” she asked calmly, still maintaining her smile.

“What business is that of yours, señora?” said Bedoya, changing his disposition to one of annoyance. “We go where we wish to go . . . Mexico, Estados Unidos. Anywhere we want . . . we go.”

“I was just curious,” Elisabeth continued, ignoring what the man had just told her. “. . . curious if you had been to a ranch near Red Rock, a ranch with three freshly planted pepper trees and a vegetable garden in the front yard?”

“As I have told you, señora,” repeated Bedoya, “where we have been is not your business.”

“The woman has a pistol,” shouted one of the men in Spanish as he reached for his own gun.

Before he could clear leather, Elisabeth's pistol exploded from beneath the blanket; its spinning projectile propelled the man backward, knocking him from the saddle.

By the time Bedoya and the others had calmed their rearing horses and attempted to reach for their own guns, Elisabeth was holding them all at bay.

“Don't anyone move,” she commanded, throwing back the smoking coverlet to reveal the large barrel of her dead husband's revolver.

“I'm as keen to kill all four of you the same as I did that one.”

Pedro Jose Bedoya and his
amigos
raised their hands slowly. Bedoya made an attempt to speak. “But, señora—”

The Colt roared once again and Bedoya's horse crumpled beneath him, a gaping hole between its eyes.

“
I
do all the talking, mister,” said Elisabeth Rogers. “You just do the listening. Now, all of you,” she motioned with the gun's barrel, “drop your weapons.”

The other remaining bandits followed her directions. Bedoya, pinned under his dead horse, struggled to pull himself free.

“You too, mister,” she demanded with a squint to her eyes, “before you go trying to get yourself out from under that poor animal.”

The others watched cautiously as their
jefe
labored to remove his sidearm from its holster. The sheath of concho-studded leather was caught beneath the man's pinned leg and his saddle.

“I do not say something like this usually to a woman,” grunted Bedoya, “but you are already dead in this country . . .
puta
.”

He feigned spitting.

“Don't you go getting any ideas about trying to frighten me,” she told him. “Because this woman's put any fear she ever had
way
far behind her.”

She raised the gun quickly, pointing it at Bedoya's head. “You killed my family, you rotten bastard. Now it is I who take my just retribution.”

She pulled back the hammer one more time.

A large bead of perspiration bubbled to the surface on the bandit's forehead. He raised a hand. “No,” he begged. “I did not kill your fam—”

The bullet's impact split the skull of the man directly behind him from forehead to spine, killing him instantly. The knife he had neatly removed from his neckband, ready to throw at Elisabeth, dropped to the ground as he toppled from his anxious horse.

The other two reined back, splattered with the man's blood, terrified they might be next.

“No, please, señora,” said Bedoya, his hand over his heart. “Please believe me. We had nothing to do with any killings of
Americano
ranchers in Texas. We have been in Laredo for the last two days. There are witnesses who saw us there.”

Elisabeth thought for a moment, considering. Then she lowered the pistol's barrel slightly.

“All right,” she said. “The rest of you just git. Move . . .” She raised her voice. “Now.”

Once he'd pulled himself free, Bedoya swung into the dead man's saddle. Then he and the two remaining bandits wheeled their mounts around and spurred out as rapidly as they could in a westerly direction, leaving their dead companions—
and
Elisabeth Rogers—in the wake of their whirlwind departure.

 

 

Sergeant Tobias Stone, now dressed in worn trail clothing and a wool broad-brimmed hat, finished the Lord's Prayer under his breath as he rode alongside Mitchell Pennell. The burro, with their supplies dangling from two gunnysacks, followed along on a rope tied to the sergeant's saddle. They were deeper into Mexico, fourteen miles southwest of the adobe campsite where they had spent the previous night. It had been six hours since they had left the others behind and started out. No one in the camp had paid the two men any attention as they disappeared into the morning, except for Roscoe Baskin. Roscoe had waved to the two of them as they passed him by, and said, “Good luck.”

“Been in the army long now, have you?” asked Pennell.

“Thirty-eight years,” answered the sergeant, squinting ahead. “If you want ta count the time I spent in the war.”

“You married?”

Another question from the sergeant's hefty trail mate.

“Fifteen and a half years,” said Stone. “I got me a good woman . . . and a big, strapping son. He's almost fourteen years old now, he is,” added Stone with a smile.

“I ain't never been hitched up myself,” said Pennell, shaking his head. “If I ever do marry up, it'll be with one a' them
pelado
Injun women from down here, I suspect. They seem to be the only female folk that'll have anything to do with the likes of me.”

They rode along for a while, saying nothing to one another. Their horses' hooves appeared to crunch in harmony over the parched alkali of the northern Mexican desert. Every so often one would kick a rock, expanding a very soft sound into a jarring cacophony in the unremitting quietness that surrounded the two riders.

Finally, the sergeant broke the silence.

“She is more than a good woman, my wife,” he told his new companion, picking up from where he had left off several moments earlier. “She is the
best
.” He turned in his saddle to face Pennell. “I'm just sorry I can't be with her more than I am,” he added with a poignant twinge to his voice. “And my boy, too.”

“Where are they now,” asked Pennell, “your family?”

“Back at Fort Clark,” answered Stone. “The fort where I'm stationed, most of the time . . . near Juanita. We make our home there.”

“That's a long ways from here to there,” said Pennell.

“Yeah,” mumbled Stone, “a long, long way from here to there.”

 

 

There was a trail of sorts, some may have called it a two-rut wagon route, but even that was debatable. It split off from the road leading away from the camp with the adobe building and headed northwest, where some cloud-covered mountaintops were visible in the far distance.

Two hours out of the camp, Charley Sunday and his traveling companion, Roca Fuerte, came across a deserted two-horse fence-wagon on that desolate byway. The wagon was lying on its back, turned turtle, with no sign of team nor driver.

Upon further investigation, both Charley and his friend determined the wagon to be American-made, and that it was definitely not an ancient relic left along the way by some earlier Mexican army expedition or a lone Mormon pioneer.

Charley dismounted. He slowly circled the wagon, his trained eyes searching for any evidence that might lead him to an explanation for the vehicle's presence in such a remote location.

After several minutes, he appeared to give up. He remounted, swinging into the saddle and tucking both toes into their respective stirrups. That was when Roca Fuerte saw the corner of the fabric.

“Señor Charley,” he called out. “I think you may have missed something.” He nodded toward the wagon's upside-down spring seat.

Charley's eyes followed Fuerte's gaze. The ex-Ranger saw it, too—a small piece of material that poked up from under the capsized ranch vehicle. He swung down once again and moved over to the wagon, closer this time.

Kneeling down, and using his gloved fingers, Charley wiggled the piece of knitted handiwork, pulling it out gradually so not to damage it. Finally, a small, hand-crocheted coverlet was revealed.

Charley held it up so Fuerte might see it better. “Looks like a lady's lap blanket to me,” he said. “And it looks like it's got a close-range bullet hole in it, too. Dead center.”

He wiggled the finger he'd stuck through the charred perforation to show the retired
federale
.

Fuerte shook his head slowly. “I hope that bullet wasn't meant for her. And what on earth would an American lady be doing down here all alone in Mexico, anyway?”

“Maybe she was out here doing the same thing we are,” said Charley. “Looking for something . . . or someone. And, Roca,” he added, “there are powder burns around this bullet hole. Either someone shot through it at real close range, or she was the one doing the shooting.”

 

 

Sergeant Tobias Stone and Mitchell Pennell had been on the trail since before dawn. They had eaten their morning meal in the saddle, chewing on hardtack and jerky, then washing it down with warm water from their canteens. Like their horses, the supply burro had been fed a cup of oats before they had started out.

The night they had spent previously had been very chilly, windy at times, with gusts strong enough to spook the burro and the horses.

The sergeant had even gotten up in the cold, blowing darkness to stand with the livestock, whispering softly into the ears of the frightened animals, soothing their tensions with his soft voice and gentle hands.

Tobias Stone knew animals well, having been born on a large farm in Mississippi—once a great plantation before the Southern Rebellion had exploded. He had grown up sharecropping with his family and working part-time for the plantation's hostler—taking care of the estate's livestock. He had thought, back then, that being a hostler, the caretaker of the horses and livestock for a large plantation, was what he would grow up to be. But he was wrong. His parents died, without warning, in a cotton-gin mishap, shortly after Tobias turned sixteen. And on the same day they were killed, the land they had sharecropped for what seemed like a lifetime to the teenaged Tobias was turned over to another family. Plus, his part-time position with the hostler was taken from him, too. Only then had it become clear to the young Tobias Stone that he was really a nonentity as far as the plantation owner was concerned, and that he had only been accepted earlier because his parents had been meeting their established quota.

A day or two later, after he and his younger siblings had buried their mother and father, the five of them were given their freedom by the plantation's owner—who knew the war was going badly for the South—and they were allowed to go their separate ways, with Tobias ending up in Kentucky.